


The Ugliness Within You

by ThreeCrowsInATrenchcoat



Series: Wash Away the Rain (Winter Soldier AU) [6]
Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Angst with a Happy Ending, Blood and Injury, Gen, Implied/Referenced Brainwashing, Implied/Referenced Torture, Memory Alteration, Memory Loss, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Non-Graphic Violence, Winter Soldier AU, and a loss of self/free-will, but he gets better I promise, general confusion about memories
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-04
Updated: 2020-11-04
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:33:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27388759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThreeCrowsInATrenchcoat/pseuds/ThreeCrowsInATrenchcoat
Summary: It went like this. The Duke was bad.Well, no, that wasn’t quite right. The Duke was good. Very, very good. Good at doing bad things. And he delighted in doing those things. There was a part of him in there somewhere that knew he shouldn’t enjoy it, knew it was wrong. But that part was buried so deep beneath the layers and layers of the Duke that he could almost never hear it.So for the sake of simplicity, one could, indeed, say the Duke was bad.(or: the Duke isn't quite sure he understands what's happening. But there's a part of him that will protect this Roman guy at all costs.)
Series: Wash Away the Rain (Winter Soldier AU) [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1929958
Comments: 6
Kudos: 59





	The Ugliness Within You

**Author's Note:**

> I promised y'all some one-shots, and here's the first! I glossed over this scene at the end of part 5 because it didn't fit with the flow. So I took it out to publish separately. 
> 
> I highly recommend reading parts 1-5 of this series first. But the tl:dr is: Remus and Janus are ex-brainwashed assassins, and the boys have just managed to take Remus back from the bad people. 
> 
> Please check the tags. This story involves discussion of missing/untrustworthy memories, implied torture and brainwashing, and just general Dealing With Trauma stuff. Feel free to ask for more details if a particular tag worries you.
> 
> Enjoy!

"Remus woke up, suddenly and violently, the morning after their assault on the headquarters. It wasn’t pretty. But nobody had expected it to be." [[X](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27298363)]

\- - -

Code: Creativity was a kill order. One target, codename: Deceit. 

That name didn’t sound quite right to him, but he didn’t protest. 

Code: Curiosity was also a kill order, to be executed only in the event of inescapable capture. One target, codename: the Duke. 

That name didn’t sound quite right, either. 

Nevertheless, he had his orders.

Codename: Deceit turned out to be a difficult target. His mind couldn’t exactly figure out _what_ it was using as a comparison (had he had other targets before, easier targets?) but his body reacted with surprise when the target fought back with ferocity. 

...Why did the target seem so familiar?

It didn’t matter. His orders didn’t allow it to matter. Code: Creativity was a kill order.

But then, his target _begged_. 

“Remus,” his target had said. “ _Please_.”

And just for a moment, the orders felt distant, a whisper under the din of the self asking, screaming, filling his mind to the brim with one question: _am_ I _Remus?_

And then his head exploded in pain, and everything went dark. 

\- - -

When he awoke, it was to the thundering internal cacophony of his orders, his mind, and his body all arguing with each other. His orders crackled and burned, like a tangle of live wires beneath his sternum. His mind seemed to be digging at itself, trying to push its way through the static that clouded it. And his body was simply panicking. 

He identified the source of the panic: the heavy restraint draped across the full length of his body, pinning both his legs and his arms. This punishment was rare. They only did this when he had failed. 

Had he failed?

He lashed out, and the restraints fell away with little resistance, surprising him. He clawed his way out from underneath them and got to his feet. 

In the 2.6 seconds it took him to do so, his mind registered his surroundings: a home, a living room, a couch. A pile of blankets that sat in a heap on the floor now.

Another person on the couch. Stirring from sleep. 

It was his mind’s turn to panic. He vaulted over the couch and took off down the hall. There was a shout of surprise from the man on the couch, but it did nothing to slow his retreat. 

He barreled into the next room so fast he clipped his shoulder on the door frame. His body registered pain, more pain than the action should have caused. His mind pushed it aside.

He was not alone in this room either. His eyes darted around wildly. This was a kitchen. There was food spread out across the counters in various stages of preparation. One man, stood over an onion with a knife in his hand, paused mid-chop to glance over. He had soft eyes, and an expression that shifted quickly from surprise to delight to confusion in the span of two seconds. The second man- purple hair and a fierce glower, stood over by the open refrigerator with a jug of milk in hand- turned sharply to look at him.

He flinched back a few steps. What was happening. 

“Remus! You’re awake!”

Who?

The onion-chopping man was smiling at him. Still holding the knife. His shoulder ached at the sight of it.

“Hey, you’re ok,” the purple-haired man said, gently. “Remus, you’re safe.”

This was wrong. This was all wrong. In his chest, his orders tightened their hold until he could barely breathe. Code: Curiosity burned red-hot against his lungs.

But the self pushed it down. Spat out the words “not fucking yet.”

There was a door in the wall behind the onion-chopping man, with a window that showed a sliver of the outside beyond the blue curtains. The onion man had a weapon, but showed no signs of aggression. If he moved fast enough, he could force his way past. He could reach the door, and get out. 

“Remus, kiddo, I promise, we aren’t gonna hurt you-”

He moved as the onion man spoke, roughly pushing him into the counter so he could move toward the door. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the purple-haired man move toward them. Then he felt the onion man’s fingers curl around his wrist, and his body reacted on instinct. 

His free hand shot out. Grabbed for the closest weapon. Swung.

The onion man released his grip and fell back with a yelp as the cast-iron pan struck him across the cheek. 

He tried for the door again. He made it one step further before a weight appeared at his back. One arm wrapped around his chest, and a hand grasped at the cast iron pan, trying to wrench it away. The onion man ducked underneath the struggle and ran out of the kitchen. 

He snarled, feral and angry, and rounded on the purple man trying to hold him back. He lashed out with his free hand. His nails raked across the purple man’s face and caused a hiss of pain, but no looser grip. The cast iron was ripped from his grasp. It clattered loudly to the floor. The sound startled a part of him, the self, and his orders took over. 

They were trying to capture him. That was not permitted.

He struck, hard: an elbow to the solar plexus. The grip went slack. He twisted loose and turned to grab his winded attacker by the lapels of his jacket. He heaved, and the purple man slammed against the counter behind him.

He moved in to finish the job, when his orders suddenly grabbed his body’s attention and made him look to the hallway.

Codename: Deceit stalked toward him.

Code: Creativity was a kill order.

He abandoned the purple man to meet his target. His mind replayed their last encounter, recalled his target’s injuries and weak points. Wounded left side. Right shoulder mobility limited. Possible vision impairment of the left eye. 

With no other available weapons, he lashed out with his bare knuckles. His target side stepped, but did not move away, instead stepping in close, so close their bodies were pressed together. He heard a voice in his ear. 

“Mission override. Code: Rhyme or Reason.”

His orders scattered, like a jolt of electricity across his whole body. The mind reeled, the body crumbled, and the self saw Dee’s face shift from determined to apologetic before everything went dark around him.

\- - -

It went like this. The Duke was bad.

Well, no, that wasn’t quite right. The Duke was good. Very, very good. Good at doing bad things. And he delighted in doing those things. There was a part of him in there somewhere that knew he shouldn’t enjoy it, knew it was _wrong_. But that part was buried so deep beneath the layers and layers of the Duke that he could almost never hear it. 

So for the sake of simplicity, one could, indeed, say the Duke was bad.

There was someone else in there, though, lost in the massive junk heap of thought and emotion that was his mind, if he tried to look beyond the cloud of static that hung around like a veil. He suspected the part of him that insisted killing people shouldn’t be enjoyable was a part of this someone else. He only ever caught glimpses of the someone else before his mind and his orders would converge to cover it up.

The someone else had a name, once. But he couldn’t remember it.

\- - -

The Duke woke up in the living room again. His chest still felt staticky where his orders had scattered, and it kind of made him want to peel his skin off. 

That desire was intensified by the realization that someone was _touching_ him.

At least the blankets hadn’t been replaced.

“What the fuck are you doing?”

The man withdrew his hands. He was small and lean, the kind of guy the Duke could snap like a toothpick if he could get a good hold on him. The lean ones were always squirmy bastards. The left side of his face was littered with still-healing scars, and his eyes were sharp and calculating- and, somehow, familiar. 

“I’m checking your shoulder,” the man said. He had a voice like crushed velvet. “You bashed it pretty hard. Opened it up again.”

The Duke glanced over at said shoulder. He was wearing a soft button-up shirt, which was open just enough to reveal the fresh gauze packed around the area where the clavicle ended and the humerus began. No fucking wonder that arm hurt so much. 

The scarred man hadn’t moved. His hands still hovered six and three quarter inches away. He was sitting on the edge of the couch, just close enough to reach, but not quite close enough to crowd. He didn’t seem aggressive.

“Fine.” The Duke shrugged. Which hurt, but he kept that to himself. Then, as the scarred man moved in to finish applying the clean bandages, he said, “I don’t recognize you. New handler?”

Why did that make the guy look so sad?

“No,” he answered after a moment. “No, we… we have a lot to talk about.”

Oh. Weird. 

“Alright. Did you know when we’re babies we’ve got 300 bones, but as adults we only have like 200? Where do those other hundred bones go? Do we eat them?” 

A gentle smile crossed the scarred man’s face. 

“No, I didn’t know that. Tell me more.”

The Duke talked until the scarred man was done with his shoulder, and it was _weird_. His handlers never let him talk like this. Usually all he got for sharing his thoughts was a backhand to the face. They most certainly never asked these gentle, prompting questions or urged him to keep going. 

Who the hell was this guy?

And who were those other people? He could see them peeking around the corner every once in a while. If they were trying to be stealthy, they needed better training. 

Finally, the scarred man packed away the first aid kit and leaned back enough to let the Duke sit up. His vision swam for a minute, but he shook it off.

“Do I have a mission?” he asked. The last thing he could remember was the mission override that scattered his previous orders. His chest felt empty without them.

The scarred man looked troubled. “No, there’s no more missions. You’re all done.” A pause, then, “You did a good job.”

The Duke tensed. No more missions? What did that mean?

“There’s… a few people who want to meet you, I think.” The scarred man’s eyes flickered over toward the hall. He must have spotted the others lurking over there. “Do you want to meet them?”

A choice. This was as new a sensation as being allowed to talk. The Duke didn’t know how to respond. The scarred man waited patiently until he gathered enough nerve to nod. He hoped that was the right answer. 

The scarred man smiled at him again.

“Okay,” he said. He turned toward the hall. “Roman, Patton. You can stop hiding now.”

\- - -

This story really begins twelve years ago.

Shit was already going down in their family. He had a brother with tumors growing in his spine, and parents working desperately to afford the medical bills. Remus, fresh out of high school, worked too, because Roman couldn’t- shouldn’t have to- and between the four of them, it seemed like everything was going to be ok. 

And then a jackass on a cellphone ran his parents off the road, and suddenly it was just him and Roman.

Suddenly it seemed like nothing was going to be ok. 

After that, Remus took any job he could get, and he didn’t care who was paying. He was big and strong and more clever than anyone gave him credit for. And he was desperate. That desperation found him work. The kind of work that paid well. 

The kind of work he couldn’t tell his brother about. 

Things were fine, for a while. He buried their parents and took care of his brother. He lied about where the money came from.

Roman found out eventually, though, when a rival gang decided to try and get rid of their competition’s best muscle. It didn’t work, because Remus was better with the bat he kept at his bedside than the group of gangbanger assholes were with their little guns. But it was enough for Roman to demand they move across the country, to get away from it all. A fresh start for them both, he said. 

And, well. Remus would do anything his brother asked. 

They moved to a new city. Remus got a real job. Things were ok. And then the car broke down. And then their rent went up. And then Roman needed another surgery. And Remus felt like he was drowning.

The universe threw him a lifeline, and it all seemed legit at first. A simple research program, one that he just so happened to qualify for. He didn’t really understand what they were researching, but they were federally funded, and the pay was good. If there were red flags, he missed them all. Roman’s medical bills were covered. Things were ok.

Then one day, Remus went to work.

And he did not come home. 

\- - -

They were joined in the livingroom by two men. 

The first wore a bright smile, his eyes crinkling up behind his glasses despite the dark bruise that was forming across his cheekbone. _Onion man_ , his mind supplied, throwing him images of this man chopping an onion in a kitchen and saying words that were lost to the static, but seemed to be gentle and kind sounding.

The second man wheeled himself into the room in a wheelchair. He wasn’t smiling. In fact, he looked vaguely sick. His mind supplied an image of this man sleeping on the other side of this very couch. His hair was still mussed up. 

Somewhere beyond the static, the someone else perked up at the sight of him.

The onion man came over and sat down on the other side of the couch. Near, but not within arm’s reach.

“Hi, Remus,” he said softly. “Hey, it’s… it’s real good to see you again, slugger.”

The Duke glanced over at the scarred man for an explanation.

“That’s Patton,” the man offered. “You’ve met him before. A long time ago. And Roman…”

The Duke followed the scarred man’s gaze to where the man in the wheelchair had come within three feet of him and stopped. He was looking at the Duke with expressions of sadness, hope, and fear mixed together on his face.

“Roman?” the Duke echoed. A few tears dribbled down the man’s cheeks at the sound of his voice. The someone else in the back of his mind wanted desperately to reach out and wipe the tears away. 

“Remus, I-” Roman’s voice broke for a moment. He moved himself a foot and four inches closer to the Duke. “I’m so sorry. I… I looked for you. I looked everywhere. You… you were just. _Gone._ I had no idea you were…”

His voice dissolved into a choked sob. And, well. That wasn’t right at all. 

The someone else- the someone else who’s name was _Remus-_ pushed through the static of his mind, and he reached out to wrap Roman in his arms. He didn’t miss how the scarred man- wait. Dee?- seemed to tense at the sudden movement, nor how Patton’s expression shifted into one of concern for a moment. 

It was almost laughable, really.

As if Remus would ever let the Duke hurt his brother. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! You can find me on tumblr @threecrowsinatrenchcoat, please come and yell with me/at me.
> 
> Requests and prompts set in this 'verse are open. If there's anything you want to see, drop it in the comments or send me a tumblr ask!
> 
> I think we all know what song the title is from.


End file.
